News

NEW YORK, NY August 22, 2007 —A commission to study Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan will be able to get to work, now that its 17 members have all been appointed. WNYC's Beth Fertig has more.

By design, the commission is heavily slanted in Bloomberg's favor. Ten of the 17 members were appointed by the mayor, the governor, the city council speaker and the assembly's minority leader - all of whom support congestion pricing. But that doesn't mean it's a done deal.

The panel is charged with studying a system for charging drivers who enter Manhattan. But it can also propose alternative plans that reduce traffic by the same amount. And there are competing views about whether the final recommendation must include new tolls. The federal government has promised to give the city more than $350 million for expanding mass transit if the state approves some kind of congestion pricing by the end of next March.

Many lawmakers oppose new tolls, but some have suggested banning trucks on certain days or raising existing tolls only during peak hours. For WNYC I'm Beth Fertig.